Talk:Oklahoma City

In the nicknames section, the nickname "The Big Friendly" is a false nickname that nobody in the city actually uses. It is likely the city trying to re-brand itself, with a puff piece article that has even been rescinded by the original author in a later article. Also, I lived there for 20+ years and still visit family there regularly. ^[1] 4.2.161.196 (talk) 05:07, 2 February 2021 (UTC)

Agreed. 2600:8803:C7DC:500:F41A:223A:163D:BBF1 (talk) 05:04, 3 June 2025 (UTC)

Many city pages have the denonym for the residents who live there. I didn't see one on this page. Does anyone know what the denonym of OKC residents is? Shankyouverymuch08 (talk) 14:40, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

Hello. I have lived here all my life. The accepted denonym for OKC is “Oklahoma Citian.” I am not joking. That’s why it’s not included in the article. 2600:8803:C7DC:500:F41A:223A:163D:BBF1 (talk) 05:03, 3 June 2025 (UTC)

Most people don't agree with U.S. Census regions, so I don't get why we are treating it as gospel that "the Census is correct and therefore Oklahoma City is in the South." As someone born in Oklahoma, and raised in Oklahoma City, most people there do not consider themselves southerners, yet it is stated as fact. Obviously this is an anecdote, but I don't see why the Census is treated as more credible than everything that does not align with it, such as sources that classify the area as Southwest, South-Central, Central, etc. etc. Master of Time (talk) 10:49, 21 July 2025 (UTC)

I'm from the area and would contend that it is. I believe Oklahoma is a southern state, "we ain't no yankee Cornhuskers." WP:OR goes both ways-UCO2009bluejay (talk) 00:27, 3 August 2025 (UTC)

Well most Americans/self-ID'd southerners don't consider Oklahoma a southern state. There are some surveys of this. It's just the Census being treated as gospel by Wikipedia, while adding no clarification that these are specifically Census regions when using them.

And from me personally, given your quip, I am not nor will I ever be a southerner. I can buy the logic that eastern Oklahoma is part of the south, and there are some regional variants that represent as much, but it does not make sense to include the entire area west of the I-35/I-44 corridors as part of the south. And "Yankees" are New Englanders, not "Northerners." My objection is that we are using an administrative agency as the determiner for "cultural" regions and not geographic ones. Master of Time (talk) 01:20, 8 August 2025 (UTC)

I think you're exactly correct that Oklahoma suffers from regional confusion. However, how U.S. cultural regions are defined and treated on Wikipedia has been discussed, appropriately, elsewhere. At the time of my leaving this comment, there is only one reference in this article to Oklahoma City being part of the South ("[i]t is the 20th-most populous U.S. city and 8th largest in the Southern United States"). I don't think it is controversial at all to reference Oklahoma City as being part of the Southern United States, especially as the region is defined on Wikipedia, and I don't think that this sentence needs to be changed.

But, I disagree with many of your assertions. While you may not identify as a Southerner, there are many residents of Oklahoma and Oklahoma City who identify as Southerners. Aside from this, whether Oklahomans (and Oklahoma Citians) consider themselves Southerners is related to, but a separate question from, whether Oklahoma (and Oklahoma City) is part of the Southern United States.

While you do not provide any sources to back your claim that most Oklahomans do not identify as Southerners, the sociologist John Shelton Reed conducted surveys on this topic and found that most Oklahomans identified themselves as Southerners. Further evidence that Oklahoma Citians identify with the South (or Southern culture, specifically) can be inferred from this article, which, at the time of this comment, details that Oklahoma City's religious community includes a plurality of Southern Baptists.

In 2014, FiveThirtyEight published a survey which polled 61 Oklahoma residents about which states comprised the South; 32/61 (~52%) of Oklahoma residents responded that Oklahoma was part of the South. FiveThirtyEight has the raw .csv data from this survey hosted on its GitHub page, for those curious. Of course, this is a small sample, but this particular survey has been widely discussed.

These are hardly the only indicators that many Oklahomans consider themselves Southerners or their state part of the South, and they contradict the idea that it is unpopular or incorrect to associate Oklahoma with the Southern United States. Culture, geography, and history provide additional bases to link Oklahoma, and Oklahoma City, to the Southern United States.

However, I would agree with the idea that the U.S. Census Bureau-defined Southern United States is not a perfect definition of the cultural region that is the South. But, for a variety of reasons that have been discussed on the Wikipedia talk page for the Southern United States article for years, the Southern United States census region is a decent proxy for the cultural region that is the South.

2600:8803:AE05:700:39DD:C682:1C1F:BFE7 (talk) 06:00, 28 October 2025 (UTC)

I feel that putting an "R" there could make the uneducated reader believe that "the Republicans" won this election on a partisan general election ballot, rather than there being a couple hardline conservatives, a relative moderate (Holt), and a not really very serious liberal leaning candidate on a fully non-partisan ballot. Master of Time (talk) 21:39, 2 August 2025 (UTC)

Maybe add an EFN noting the election is non partisan? Olliefant (she/her) 17:44, 29 October 2025 (UTC)

Devon Energy is not headquartered in Oklahoma City anymore, someone should remove it, they are moving to Houston, Texas Chuck541 (talk) 00:22, 7 March 2026 (UTC)